1. I agree with you that we bring the totality of our experience to large
conclusions such as the existence of God.

2. I want to zero in on two of your statements:

"I do not see any metaphysics in the doings of physicists."
"Surely, "final cause" in Nature is metaphysics talk, not physics talk."

I want to understand what you mean here. We have been told over and over
again, from the time of Bacon forward, by both scientists and historians and
philosophers of science, that modern science deals with efficient causes
only, not final causes. It is on this ground that Eugenie Scott and
countless others ban ID from the realm of science, because it does not
restrict itself to efficient causes and allows for the possibility of final
causes.

Now, here you are saying that "final cause" is metaphysics talk, not physics
talk. Well, if that is the case, then "efficient cause" is equally
metaphysics talk, not physics talk. For that matter, if we want to get
really tough, "cause" is metaphysics talk, not physics talk. If we take
your restrictive definition of physics, it would seem that causal
connections cannot be inferred without leaving physics behind and entering
the realm of metaphysics. What right has a scientist to say that one event
is the "cause" of another? From the pure data-gatherer's point of view,
nature is merely a series of happenings which we can count, measure, etc.,
but for which we can utter not one word of explanation. Ultimately your
view would appear to land us in medieval Muslim occasionalism -- there is no
nature at all, only the momentary will of God, which because of its apparent
continuity gives us the illusion of nature. Is this your view? If not,
when is it legitimate for scientists to say that they have explained the
natural "cause" of something?

Perhaps it would help me if you would direct your distinctions toward the
example we have been discussing -- the formation of the first cell.
Presumably there was a time on earth when there were no cells. Presumably,
then, there was a first cell. A cell is not a supernatural but a natural
entity. Science purports to be able to explain the behaviour of natural
entities. And in the last two hundred years, science has grown more
ambitious, and purports to explain also the *origin* of natural entities.
Thus, many scientists are now actively engaged in trying to explain the
origin of the first cell. To cut to the chase, the existentially important
question for the vast majority of human beings is whether this first cell
came into existence because some intelligence wished it to come into
existence, and designed it to have the features that it has [the question of
miraculous emergence versus front-loaded naturalistic emergence is
secondary], or whether this first cell came into existence by a series of
chemical accidents which were not planned by anyone. Randy Isaac is
asserting that it is completely outside the bounds of science to hypothesize
that the cell came into existence due to the plan of an intelligent
designer. He thinks, however, that scientists who are doing research on the
chemical evolution of the cell are doing genuine scientific work -- as long
as they do not openly characterize the chemical evolution as "unguided"
(even though they almost to a man personally believe that it is unguided,
are almost to a man motivated to do the research by the desire to prove that
life could have arisen unguided, and almost to a man tacitly convey to their
readers the impression that the process is unguided). He thinks that the
design inference is inherently metaphysical (not necessarily false, but
metaphysical) by its very nature, whereas the chemical evolution inference
is inherently scientific (not necessarily true, but scientific) by its very
nature.

I am puzzled as to where your position would fit into this discussion.
Based on the minimalist notion of "science" you have given here, I would
think that your position ought to be that the chemical evolution people are
just as metaphysical as the design people. But I am not finding the
application clear. Could you make it directly for me? Do you agree with
Randy that an intelligent design approach to the origin of the first cell is
inherently metaphysical and cannot be made scientific by any means (amazing
new levels of complexity discovered, colossal probability numbers against
chance formation, etc.)? And do you agree with him that the chemical
evolution people are doing good, metaphysics-free science? Or do you think
that the chemical evolution people are also resorting to metaphysical
explanation? And finally, what would you say is the proper approach to the
question: "How did the first cell come about?" Can that question be
addressed by science at all?

I want to emphasize what the subject matter of science is, that is, what
does the physicist, say, plays with. It is not inferences plus data but
data, which are snapshots of reality. The development of theories is how we
put together all those snapshots. Newton was able to summarize the main data
or observations of the solar system and terrestrial motion by introducing
the notion of force and dynamical equations that made predictions. I do not
think that Newton would say that he was inferring gravity. Remember Newton
used mathematical description and the verbal description of the force as
gravity is more incidental than necessary. We know that â€œaction at a
distanceâ€